SEATTLE, Wash. – Mary Brunkow, a University of Washington alum, has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.

Brunkow, along with Frederick Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi, received the prestigious award for their “groundbreaking discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance that prevents the immune system from harming the body.”

Brunkow currently serves as a senior program manager at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle. She earned her bachelor’s degree in molecular and cellular biology from the University of Washington in 1983 and went on to receive her doctoral degree from Princeton in 1991.

Interestingly, Brunkow discovered she won the Nobel Prize in an unexpected way. Her family dog alerted her to someone at the door, which turned out to be an AP repo

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